The Publishing Contrarian

My plan for New Year’s Eve was NOT to go to Times Square, thank you. I’ve been there. Believe me, once is enough. If you’ve ever been, you know you dare not lose your footing lest you get trampled to death. Not to mention that when your companion grabs you at midnight for a kiss, you can only pray that no one lurking beside you is making a grab for your wallet. For a decade, I’d danced until midnight at New Year’s Eve parties held at the Diplomats’ Dining Room at the United Nations. I’d wandered the 4 AM streets of the city on New Year’s morning trying to find a vomit-free cab. This year, however, I found I preferred a quiet champagne fizzle and the sleep of the networked-out innocent to the tabletop dancing girl of yesteryear.

Indeed, Terrible Teddy, aka TT (the 22 lb Maine Coon Cat I picked up about three weeks ago from ARF, The Animal Rescue Fund), and I cozied up together in front of a fire in East Hampton. We’d agreed to stay up until 11:59 PM, sipping warm milk (him) and other beverages (me) and then call it a year. Frankly, I think both of us were happy to watch my 2006 calendar go up in flames. Gargantuan TT had spent six months up island squished in a cage designed for your average-sized Tom cat. He was headed for the gallows when ARF rescued him (cherry picked him, they said) and—dare I say this—foisted this big, bad-ass cat off on me. (Hey, Sara Davidson, you think that I didn’t hear the front door slammed shut and bolted at ARF as a crated TT and I headed for my Jeep?) By New Year’s Eve, with the help of a full belly feeding and full body brushing, TT’s demeanor had turned from paw-swiping raptor to sandpaper-tongue kisser, and he had tentatively plunked his lard-ass self down on my lap, making sounds reminiscent of  a purr while I read The Memory of Running by Ron McLarty.

Here’s to 2006. [Unprintable.] Here’s to 2007! “Bottoms Up!”

Yes, I think the ringing out of 2006 signifies the end of a hard year for TT, too. He was in cat jail and I was spending the holiday season in civil court in Morristown, NJ, waiting for a verdict from a jury of my peers. I believe I was in bed in the fetal position with the covers pulled over my head on New Year’s Eve last year, unable to eat, eyes ringed with fatigue, hair falling out in clumps onto the pillowcase, 40–count ‘em–pounds skinnier than I already was. You know what I’m talking about: that Bela Szigethy v. Lynne Scanlon multi-year, multi-motion, trial-by-jury horror wrought by multizillionaire Bela Szigethy on me. (One of my New Year’s resolutions will be to only mention the lawsuit half as much as I have. I promise. Wait, stop trying to uncross my fingers!) I’ll be mopping up my own blood for years.

Let’s Party! Get Down!

So this December, after talking it over with TT, I decided that

1) I would put his transport cage away so he wouldn’t constantly be worrying about having to return to death row, and

2) I’d head out for industry parties, holiday movies and gallery receptions with friends to meet and greet and have a good time—my pockets stuffed with the usual business cards!

I hope you got out, too! ‘Cause you know my philosophy: “Get out and get going.”

Here’s what I was up to:

Clinkin’ Wine Glasses at MediaBistro Galley Cat Party! Did you see my photo? If not, here it is. I’m crammed cheek to jowl with other procrastinating holiday shoppers in a bar called Lolita on the lower east side of Manhattan, working the crowd with intrepid Galleycat co-stars and co-editors Ron Hogan and Sarah Weinman. Although I consider most of the revelers to be of sippy-cup age, ya never know who will be there. At another Galley Cat get-together, Carl Lennertz, VP Marketing, HarperCollins, and fellow blogger (PublishingInsider) and I finally got to meet. He’s a big fish. Yes, he is.

Chattin’ With Authors at East End Books!  Lena Tabori was holding court there. She is co-founder of the publishing house Stewart, Tabori, and Chang and Welcome Books (rather arty oeuvres). A journalist friend and I elbowed our way through the crush and met everyone, including fab photographers Eric Meola, author of Born to Run: The Unseen Photos (Bruce Springsteen, of course. I always mow my lawn to “Born in the USA.” By the time the cassette is flipped and finished, so am I!) and a suited-up Barbara Bordnick, author of  Searchings III: The Secret Language of Flowers (for the granola set.) I also met Sam Fink, author of a stunning, hand-calligraphed, illustrated and oversized, The Constitution of the United States, (an exotic gift for an attorney, really!) Jane Lahr (yep, daughter of Cowardly Lion, Bert Lahr), Paige Peterson and Christopher Cerf (think Bennett Cerf) authors of Blackie: The Horse Who Stood Still. I passed my business card out judiciously and picked up a few cards in return. The next day my Google Analytics stat counter spiked crazily with new visitors! Excellent!

Cloggin’ at a Celtic Holiday Concert! After the book signing, I was off to the Amagansett Library to hear contemporary Celtic Christmas Music and see who might turn up there. Who knew it would be standing room only! Charismatic, former flute and tin whistle child prodigy, Sean Grace, was a humongous hit. He played several different flutes, various tin whistles (be still my Irish/German heart), guitar, Irish frame drums, and sort of sang, while exuding that irresistible Irish charm. I could see those red-haired and gray-haired lassies wondering what hotel he was staying in!

Squirmin’ through Borat, The Worst Movie of 2006! Off to the movies wearing my reindeer sweater with another friend of mine, the father in the autobiography To See Every Bird on Earth, by Dan Koeppel. Jeez, I loathed Borat. I knew I should have driven my own car into town. I said as much, but NO, I was stuck watching that awful, ludicrous and embarrassing movie to the end. I understand two college students who made asses of themselves are now suing because they suffered “humiliation, and emotional and physical distress.” The entire audience should sue, too. I skulked out of the theater, hoping NO ONE would see me. 

Writhin’ at Writers’ Workshop Parties and Readings! Writers, writers everywhere and not a decent story to read. The pain. I don’t want to be any more unkind than usual, but there are two types of writing workshops: those where people burn to write and do, and those where people call what they are doing, writing, and do. Very nice people. Excellent food and drink. I kept my business cards to myself.

Meetin’ a Living Legend: Eli Wallach at The Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor. Eli Wallach. Still standing after all these years! How did a Brooklyn-born Jew who grew up in an Italian-American neighborhood wind up getting famous for playing Mexican outlaws in some of the greatest westerns ever made? (Full disclosure: above line stolen from an Amazon review of The Good, the Bad, and Me: In My Anecdotage by actor Eli Wallach. Hardcover 2005, Paperback 2006.) Am I the last person in the world to have seen Clark Cable, Marilyn Monroe, and Eli Wallach in “The Misfits?” I guess so. “I’m an anecdotist,” Eli Wallach announced cheerfully after the movie ended (at about 10:30PM) as he jauntily, if somewhat unsteadily, made it to center stage to tell Hollywood insider stories about Clark Cable and Marilyn Monroe and to answer questions from NBC’s Jeffrey Lyons, pseudo-cinephiles, local authors and journalists and unwashed masses in the audience. Wallach, who is 100 years old (ok! 93), stars with Cameron Diaz, Kate Winslet, the criminally handsome Jude Law and the miscast Jack Black in the holiday movie, aptly named “The Holiday.” Eli was amazing. By 11 PM I was ready to go home, and he was still dazzling the crowd, making himself and everyone else laugh. When my mother was 84, she was in her nightgown by 7PM. By the time my father hit 89, he was dying of self-inflicted boredom. What a guy that Eli is. I once asked my father: “Jeez, Dad, who in the world would want to live to be 100?” His answer: “Someone 99.”

Thinkin’ Impure Thoughts While Watching Jude Law in “The Holiday.” Yep, saw the movie, “The Holiday,” in a packed theater. (Diet coke: $5.00!) And lo and behold, there was the above-mentioned Eli Wallach with a big part in the movie! How does he remember all those lines at his age? I suffer almost terminal CRS and I’m A LOT younger than he is. What I do remember is the none-too-subtle advertising embedded in the movie, and THIS is interesting:

• Random House gets a big plug by the devastatingly appealing Jude Law (I may have to change my allegiance from Alec Baldwin to Jude Law) when his character says his mother is an “editor at Random House.” (I wonder if Random House paid for this BIG mention?) Remember my blog posting about Random House and Focus Films?
• At one point, as Cameron Diaz’s character is packing her bags to leave for London, in a lingering shot we get to see the stack of books she is taking with her, including The Corrections, The Kite Runner and about 6-7 other titles (See, I can’t remember anything! Eli Wallach can probably tell you what they were!)
• There is also a very flashy Audi zipping about in the film, and
• Eli Wallach’s character, all decked out for a fete, tugs on the sleeve of what he calls his new “Hugo Boss” suit.

Yep, it’s smart advertising if you can get it!

Rockin’ With Yosi Piamenta and Band at a Chanukah Concert! Who? World-renowned guitarist, that’s who! The Piamenta Band has performed in Israel, France , Australia, Africa, Switzerland, and Canada. AND, there were to be all-you-can-eat “gourmet” latkes (potato pancakes!!!) along with gigantic jelly donuts. Piamenta was discovered by Stan Getz and offered a contract, but, unlike the Wicked Witch of Publishing, Piamenta eschewed the fame and fortune that seems to make people “immensely unhappy” and returned to the Promised Land. Standing room only, yet again! Shiksa alert! Shiksa alert! Mamele, grab your sons!

Then there was The Naked Stage’s reading of Sam Shepherd’s play, The Unseen Hand, and Edward Albee’s play, The Zoo Story, gallery hopping in Sag Harbor, the lighting of the Christmas tree in East Hampton, and Sunday morning pancakes at The Springs Fire Station with Santa in attendance! Yes, indeed, I was socialized out by the time New Year’s Eve arrived.

Now that it is January 3^rd  and I’ve regouped, I want to say Happy New Year to my fellow bloggers and visitors. Thanks for keeping me company in 2006!

Note from the Wicked Witch of Publishing ™: Next post will be about the bookstore crisis. Since the early 1990’s, according to The New York Times, 50% of the independent bookstores have evaporated. Do the remaining 2500 bookstores just not “know when to fold ‘em?”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 3rd, 2007 at 6:16 pm and is filed under WW of P Gone Wild. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.